my birthday present to me

January 11, 2013

Remember last year when I was so excited about getting a real bed after sleeping on a futon for fifteen years? Well, I did it again. A couple of months ago I was eating dinner, and I looked at my plate and noticed it was pretty badly chipped. All my dishes — dinner plates, salad plates, bowls — were pretty badly chipped. Which is to be expected, since they’ve been in constant use for something like 25 years. That’s when it hit me: I’ve been eating on these plates since I was a teenager. These are the hand-me-downs I got from my parents when I moved out after college. They got new dishes, I got half of the old ones, and my brother got the other half. When Rob got married, he and Deb got new ones as part of their wedding registry and he gave the other half back to me. And I kept using them because they’re functional and quite nice looking.

And I’ve been using them since I was a teenager.

(There’s some debate with my parents about whether we got this set when we lived in Maryland, ’85-’88, or when we moved to Colorado in ’88. But the fact remains: I was a teenager.)

I decided I wanted new dishes. My very own new dishes that I picked out my very own self. It feels a lot like buying a real bed did, and it feels like I’m finally fully graduated from the dorm-room hand-me-down lifestyle I had right out of college.

Confession: I narrowed my choices down to about four that I liked, and finally decided on this one by asking myself, “What would the Elves in Rivendell choose?”

So pretty, I’m almost afraid to use them. But not really. They arrived Wednesday, and packing up the old ones so I can use these has been so very satisfying. Happy early birthday to me!

I am happy for you. :) These will just add to the fun of your dinner parties. Or even a turkey sandwich on a Saturday afternoon. P and I just bought a new set after 15 or so years of the old ones. It was thrilling to use them the first time.

Somehow we are on the same life schedule. We just bought our first bed last weekend (!) and we’re both in our 40s. In fact, it’s the first furniture-we-didn’t-put-together-ourselves purchase for both of us.

But dishes…. we’re using remnants of two hand-me-down sets from my parents. Mis-matched, chipped….. I mentioned to Paul not long ago that maybe we can take the plunge and actually buy dishes one of these years now that it appears the marriage has taken (16 years). He said “Nah…. I don’t think we’re ready!”